Oslo: March 2017
Surprisingly easy journey to Oslo. Comfortable flight in a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner in United, and the layover at LHR was comfortable enough. SAS's intra-Europe 737's use crappy seats, but at least it's a quick 2 hour flight to OSL from LHR.
Saw a decent amount of snow on the ground, but none in the city on final approach. Oslo Gardermoen Airport is done in the contemporary Northern Europe style, clean with wood tones, and the Flytoget trains are efficient to Oslo Sentralstation. Quick walk to the hotel, then I promptly got ambitious and decided to walk to dinner, which proved to be a bit ambitious in the dark.
Tried to get into Pjoltergeist per Cousin Marianne's recommendation, but ended up disappointed-- Pjoltergeist said they were full the days before, but that I could walk-in to the bar... turns out even the bar had a wait when I arrived. Whoops. Pity, because the food looked amazing.
Ended up at Klosteret just a few blocks away, which was a solid 6-course meal of octopus, halibut, hake, duck, cheese, and poached peach. Preparation of the octopus was perhaps the weakest, just not quite interesting after the crunch of the ring on top, but the rest was solid. Fruit bread and cheese with smoked almond in particular was my first introduction to that aspect of Norwegian cooking. Had the duck been just a tad better I'd say it would be worth a return visit, but alas, there's just too many other good places to go!